Parents should be free to help their children find work, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said, as a nepotism row overshadowed the launch of a new Government initiative to open up access to jobs.
Mr Clegg's new social mobility tzar James Caan faced accusations of hypocrisy for employing his two daughters, despite arguing that parents should not give children a helping hand but first allow them to attempt to carve out their own careers.
The DPM said it was not for politicians to tell mothers and fathers what to do.
Dragon's Den judge, Mr Caan insisted his daughters Jemma and Hanah were employed through a "normal process" of recruitment and were qualified for the jobs they were given.
Mr Clegg, whose financier father helped set up an internship for him at a Finnish bank at the start of his career, said it was natural for parents to want to help their children.
However, he insisted the Government was taking action to support youngsters who did not have the same opportunities.
Mr Caan appeared alongside Mr Clegg to promote the Opening Doors campaign.
More than 150 major organisations in the UK have committed to offering fair and open access to their jobs and professions for young people, regardless of background. Mr Caan suggested in interviews this week that parents should allow offspring to establish their own careers.
He said: "You are trying to develop your child too. You don't want them to feel as though they don't have to make the effort."
In a radio interview, he said it was not good to create a society "where people get jobs based on who you know rather than what you can do" but defended the decision to employ his daughters.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article